Depending on the business' needs, the best recommendation is to go with a platform that gives you all the features you need and none of those that will simply distract from your strategy. Suggest folks check out social collaboration via Groupsites @ www.collectivex.com.
- Carissa Caramanis O'Brien

Maybe we should wait until 2010 to find out, and while we're waiting, build 2009 web sites.
- Andy Bakun

It's still in private release, but Notable (www.notableapp.com) is becoming a real life saver for giving feedback on web sites/applications.
- hunter

Specific tools should be dependent on the tech team (e.g., size, existing skills). More important are the business's attitude to engage and delight their stakeholders.
- Bill L

Idk, I don't think its about the tools, I think its about what you want to do with your site, and then what tools you use depends on that and like.. your skill sets, and all that good stuff.. for my personal sorta business e I'm looking at C4D, After Effects, Photoshop, Flash, and final cut studio.. seems like a code editor probably goes without saying?
- Matt Searles

Depends on the business. Depends on their customers. It's all relative.
- Andy McIlwain

Andy: it's not... it's about a different, new way to communicate/work/live - for all the businesses! for me, it feels like we are in the middle of a revolution!
- Arne Krueger

I never felt like this before! i was running my own software company with 30 people in 2000 and was just wondering!) i have now the same feeling, like i had maybe ;-) starting doing business with computers in 1988 at the cowfarm of my father in east germany!
- Arne Krueger

I use Wordpress, Friend Feed, Disqus, YouTube, and Google Friend Connect on the web pages and then to supplement the pages and features - I use FaceBook, Twitter, Linked-In, Digg, and Delicious. The first 5 are key to connecting the web page/blog socially; the supplements are to enhance those features.
- Robert Freeze

If your budget doesn't include an accomplished developer (send more work to those guys!), to get started effectively on the cheap: Squarespace, Twitter, Friendfeed, the Google suite (analytics, apps for your domain, connect, adwords, et al.), and probably Facebook (which seems to be working a lot better for business).
- Brian Hill

If you have a developer, or are a developer, what David Cann has done with almost.at using the cappuccino framework looks very interesting...
- Brian Hill

Whatever tools a small company would use, it should be funded in this economy leveraging Kiva.org
- Eran Even-Kesef

A great tool everyone has is the ability to tell a story. I would suggest that rather than build just a marketing site, or online community, or social network, that you take the tool of storytelling and use it to build a 2010 website.
- Brendan Cosgrove

In no particular order: CMS: drupal (for industrial strength) or joomla (for ease of use)... sorry, but wordpress is brain-dead... round it out with some groovy core technologies: Wave/XMPP, RSS/Atom, and Ajax.
- Fred Davis

Same as Jeff Weber looking at a .NET blogging platform instead of WordPress - been using GraffitiCMS.
- Kevin Tunis

I honestly don't care what the tools are, but whatever you build, make sure you have a mobile version of it and I don't mean iPhone only. Build the site and ensure it works well on the main 4 mobile browsers iPhone, android, S60, Palm and maybe Win mobile.
- Keith Bennett

Lots of good tech suggestions. I'll add HTML Canvas. But the key to success is understanding the value you are adding for your customers. Of course social networks are the latest example of this, but remind yourself again and again WHY you are here - to understand what value you add now, and how you can improve that over time. You need to find tools and design patterns that allow you to collect as much feedback, as quickly and easily as possible.
- David Sky